I used to hate web-based CG, now I prefer it.

I was an application staffer on TR for a few years (for Mortal+ and changeling), but have staffed other smaller places too where I had to review some apps (TR burned me out bad though so I tend to avoid that particular task if I can).

My experience is that it’s not very useful for screening the worst kind of problematic people out. Abusive or manipulative people will almost always look fantastic on paper, you won’t find out about them until they’re hurting people on your game.

Player ooc behavior during the application process will catch more people. How do they handle being told no? How do they handle a mild wait time? How many arguments/how much showboating do they do on channels in the wait time?

It can also kind of alert you to the kinds of folks that probably won’t be problematic in a big way on the game, but will annoy people a lot because they don’t have discretion (like the folks who insert explicit and elaborate sexual content into the application bg knowing or perhaps not thinking that it’s making a real life staff person have to read that) or don’t understand the theme or splat. That may or may not be important to the game at large.

I have spent the longest time away from being active on a game than I ever have in like 30 years of being in the hobby! That isn’t to say I haven’t tried or dipped my toe in (and nothing happened to cause it, I did have fun where I dipped in!) Part of it is starting my dream job, but honestly I think some of it is that I take a med that is amazing (pretty much obliterated all my chronic illness stuff!) but now there’s an understanding that it affects satiety in a big way. I find I don’t crave the rush or busy-ness of a super active MUSH schedule, which filled a lot of that needing to keep my super bouncy mind active to be happy. I totally get being nostalgic for marathon RP and constant activity, it was one of those ways I kept my happiness meter charged for most of my adult life! Now I don’t need to do quite so many things to get that same nice feeling of contentment.

I do think if I found the right paced game that had the people I like in it, I might pick up again, but I’m also okay waiting for that too. I just find the last few places I’ve tried the pace was a little fast for me and I couldn’t keep up. The nice thing is that I wasn’t stressed out about that like I normally would fret at not being able to keep up.

So anyway. I do miss my RP partners, I’m glad I can see what people are up to here, and keep up with what’s going on so if I do wanna dip in I can. I’m sure I will at some point, but I’m also pretty sure it’s probably not going to be on a high stakes or fast paced game again!

I have seen a person get banned around constant loud complaints about asking for RP but they never accepted when people said yes. To me it was clear that they were really only interested in a few specific people, they would spam and handwring on chan when those folks were present and ignore everyone else’s invites or yeses on the lrp channel.

So it wasn’t so much a ban for asking for RP (even though thats the channel where they really were engaging in public problematic behavior) but being passive aggressive/obnoxious/extremely negative on channel.

I’m sure they are fine as a person but it was nice to not have to turn off the lrp channel and being able to use that resource again without having to also deal with their constant complaints that “nobody” would RP with then when in fact people had accepted but weren’t the intended targets of the public asking.

Usually when people act like that in public, they are equally if not more problematic 1:1 or in small groups so not an asset to the game. Maybe this person was an exception but I dunno, could never get them to accept any proactive offer of RP, they never responded to my acceptances of their public asks, and where they showed up to public scenes I or others would set up that their intended targets would come to they would go silent or stompy when that target interacted with others and it didn’t turn into a 1:1 sub scene.

I am almost positive that person’s perception was that they were banned for asking for RP too much. But that wasn’t the real issue of behavior and I doubt even if staff tried to make that clear that the person would have been open to understanding that.

@Hobbie yeah that sounds like a nightmare! There’s only so much you can do as a friend, and I think just about everyone would struggle having to deal with that, especially when it is a consistent pattern. Hopefully this will relieve a lot od stress in your life. I hope cutting out people who dont add much to your life but that level of stress ahd disappointment gives you a little more peace!

I do miss game meet ups in person! I’ve met some of my best and oldest rl friends that way, and we needed the in person meet ups because we annoyed each other on the games themselves until we met in person!

@Roadspike that is largely what I mean. If I dont think staff is able and willing to spot and remove people that don’t get it, that is where I dont bother investing/playing on that place because I know its going to go off the rails, no matter what language is used in policies/what the genuine intent is. I know many nice/creative folks who are great storytellers but suck at boundaries.

@Tez I dont think it is either, I enjoy those tensions, but personally I’d only want to give it a shot with gamerunners I trusted, both in how that would be managed and their quickness in excluding people with problematic behavior that crop up. (You are on the list of trusted gamerunners BTW but I think you already know that! <3)

I always find it disappointing when people can’t live without the historical -isms, even though I also don’t terribly mind if they’re in there to an extent and people who are clearly really leaning into getting their ooc freak on in regards to that are culled.

With most any game setting on a mush, you always have to narrow down the scope for the sanity of the staff and the health of the game as a whole. This is just part of that! Of course you will get the screamers of OMG I can’t be whatever splat/association I want putting pressure on game runners to do all nobility plus all guild availability on a fading suns game with 2 staff, or screaming for 15 splats on a WoD place when staff only have availability or interest for 1-3!

I’ve always told people I understand how exploring certain themes from the relative safety of RP is very appealing but that’s probably something better done in a private game or one that the playerbase is heavily vetted because on a public one, one with randos, or one with many “friends” of friends, you are increasing the likelihood of someone who has no business exploring those themes with others being able to come in. Maybe sometimes there’s staff willing to police it, and if there is and you like that avenue of play rather than whining you better treat them well, because most people don’t have time or patience for that.

@Hobbie I’ve managed to maintain adult friendships with people whose parenting choices wouldn’t be mine, but very importantly, it’s because we avoid long together times when the kids are involved. Most of the time we’ve had the elephant in the room discussion soon after the precipitating event, which has always been interesting (and one of the reasons why we were able to maintain the friendship). I personally have never regretted keeping a friendship in this manner (unless we couldn’t have that discussion, sans kids, but all of those times the friendship naturally fizzled).

I’m not going to say don’t go against your gut, but it might be worth thinking for a bit if you are willing to give the friendship a chance, chalk this up to not being a good vacation fit because they were more on edge with friends sharing a space (it happens), something’s going on between them that you don’t know about (it happens), or somesuch.

I’ve definitely had to draw boundaries with some friends who are also parents around what I will and won’t do with their kids at my house (or theirs) and the rules of engagement/courtesy at mine too (Like an agreement we all put the phones away/in phone jail, what areas are off limits, ect). I tend to be the more vigilant person at gatherings too just because I slip into early childhood educator mode, and I think some people naturally default to it. It definitely makes me thankful for the majority of friends in my life that are solid “aunties and uncles” to my kids, even if our day to day parenting styles aren’t in total alignment, I know they have oversight and are vigilant to keep everyone safe.

But yeah, there are a handful of folks where I have been, “You know, I enjoy doing X Y, or Z with you but I think we should do it without the kids,” too.

That being said i am sorry you are even having to consider this and that the vacation was ruined. It really sucks when people disappoint you like this. And it is totally better to just let them go sometimes too!

Shadowrun Seattle and some weird vague MOO that I’ve forgotten the name of. In 1994 or 1995 I think. Quickly followed by Twin Cities by Tea Time (the original). LOL.

I landed a dream job with excellent low cost bennies (yay state employment) and I’m still having fun and no stress! It was a hard decision to leave my old job as I loved the community there but it was getting too hard for me physically. But now even the worst day is less painful than the best day at my old job, and the worst day is pretty mellow. For now, it’s so nice to be able to breathe again, and have a normal level of stress. I also get to interact every day with 6 months old through seniors in high school, and seeing how much the big kids enjoy learning how to care for the littles is doing my heart a lot of good.

I’ve never seen this done successfully in a public game. Nor have I seen it last well in a game that turned from private to open invite.

I can’t really put my finger on it, because it wasn’t that the game was swarmed by evil people or anything weird like that. I am thinking perhaps it’s easier to mind small burps before they turn into catastrophic spew with a small number of players?

I too am eager to hear of examples where it was able to last, especially post-open-invite or when the size grew to more medium+ sized MU instead of glorified table top or very small community.

Every once in awhile I miss being staff/ST on a WoD place but dealing with people like this reminds me why I actually do not.

RL is eating me alive. I sustained what I am no longer in denial about it being a career ending injury several months ago, still doing my best to soldier through my remaining settled contract hours all while jumping into the abyss of despair that is job searching right now (and starting over in roles that I dont have 30 years of experience in). Ugh.

@RedRocket I’ve seen genuine no holds barred games developed and run but the last few i personally know of were invite only. Mostly because the runners don’t want oocly tiresome or showboating folks or want to curate their players to people they reasonably can be confident wont take it personally when something doesn’t go the way they expect.

I’ve played a soft majority of pvp friendly games in my life and honestly sometimes dealing with a big chunk of the pb attracted to them is just very tiring. I am not sure why you say it is the non pvp folks who are the whiners. My god half the reason old school pvp stuff took so long was the incessant whining and rules layering of the people most into it. Usually I was hoping one of them would just please off my PC by the end of many of the encounters so I could escape and not have to read their words anymore. I have never heard stronger whining or tantrums than on a pvp focused game.

That isn’t to say all pvp friendly folks are whiners, because they are not. But if you are very sensitive to people whining probably the best place is one that doesn’t do ooc communication very much. Those are out there too. Or were.

@Pavel oh the glory days of days (or weeks) of being timestopped/frozen.

@Pavel That’s how I recall it as well. But honestly there were so many ways to do the machinations, that the non lethal stuff was kind of inherently more rewarding. Also the system allowed great diversity in types of PCs that could get involved too (non-vampires were quite valuable). If someone only focused on the ability to kill someone whenever they wanted to, that really wasn’t going to be as effective as in essence team building for their side, ect.

However, that was also a very intensely managed game, and when the person doing most of the managing couldn’t, and it had to shift more into a traditionally managed thing, it really became problematic because people didn’t have as much fun diversity to focus on. I do think that’s really why you don’t see as much of that style of game. It’s a lot of work, if you want it to be sustainable it takes a lot of cultivating/caring for it, and if playerbase gets too big or there’s not as much time for cultivating the atmosphere then you get the same old same old problematic stuff.

@Livia This is kind of where I fall too. I definitely did less OOC discussion/avoidance of it earlier when I was on a lot of WoD games, and it doesn’t bother me when people prefer less checking in. I’m neutral on it for myself.

But I personally have found that many people I run into now are a lot more relaxed and willing to change it up with RP/invite more and more diverse tension/conflict in RP when it’s okay to have that OOC check in, and a more overt understanding that saying “I’m into whatever RP,” does not mean that “and I am down with giving you whatever you want whenever you want it so go ahead and lay that assault and kidnapping scene on me 5 minutes after I walk into this upscale restaurant on grid/feel free to snipe me unseen because I forgot to change my clothing object before coming to the dive bar so I’m dressed inappropriately, since of course if I’m logged in I’m at your disposal.”

Sometimes I could do without the “and anyone who’s into gritty RP is obviously a psycho if I’m not in the mood–even if they’re not even remotely interacting with me or affecting my RP in anyway,” that I’ve seen too but again I think that’s just people peopling, and the desire to yuck other people’s yums that aren’t yours is not something I think is ever going to stop completely.

I enjoyed the thrill of non-consent-based places. But I think I’d only play on a private/invite only one where I trusted the people running it to vet and/or remove problem people from it these days. I’m just too old/low energy for that shit.

@Ashkuri’s experience squares with what I have observed and seen friends who ran more PVP focused games have experienced.

I feel like you can’t really run a game of any sort without having to deal with a certain amount of whiny, abusive (or attempting to be such) players. I actually think that it’s not that there are MORE of those on a PVP game, but you certainly don’t escape having the same amount.

The ability to kill off other PCs at relative will has never really seemed that I’ve ever seen to encourage politer, less toxic behavior the next time around. I don’t fault the playstyle for that, but human nature.

I think a lot of expectations seem reasonable on the surface–if games happened in a vacuum or were run by robots. They do not and are not.

I think everyone is happier in the long run if when they notice that they do not get a response in the amount of time before they start to feel resentful and this seems to be the rule rather than the exception either they need to accept that and play with what they have or it is time to move on.

Staying while mad and steeping in resentment poisons the experience even when it is your turn, and can also affect everyone you are around too. It doesn’t really matter why. If the Could/Should isn’t happening for you, it probably isn’t personal (unless thats your usual experience across different gamerunners and genres, in which case perhaps some introspection is needed). But it is good to make some realistic expectations shifts in how much mental energy and time you want to invest in a game where for whatever reason there’s a mismatch in what you get vs what you feel you’re giving.

And sometimes players need time off to recover from a previous bad experience elsewhere. Few things kill staff or storytelling morale (or player morale) than a player vomiting game trauma dumping all over them and having a huge chip on their shoulder about how other people have wronged them elsewhere and are unable to interact without mentioning it frequently.